VIII. TOAD’S ADVENTURES
When Toad found himself immured in a dank and noisome dungeon, and
knew that all the grim darkness of a medieval fortress lay between him and the
outer world of sunshine and well-metalled high roads where he had lately been
so happy, disporting himself as if he had bought up every road in England, he
flung himself at full length on the floor, and shed bitter tears, and abandoned
himself to dark despair. ‘This is the end of everything’ (he said), ‘at least it is the
end of the career of Toad, which is the same thing; the popular and handsome
Toad, the rich and hospitable Toad, the Toad so free and careless and debonair!
How can I hope to be ever set at large again’ (he said), ‘who have been
imprisoned so justly for stealing so handsome a motor-car in such an audacious
manner, and for such lurid and imaginative cheek, bestowed upon such a number
of fat, red-faced policemen!’ (Here his sobs choked him.) ‘Stupid animal that I
was’ (he said), ‘now I must languish in this dungeon, till people who were proud
to say they knew me, have forgotten the very name of Toad! O wise old
Badger!’ (he said), ‘O clever, intelligent Rat and sensible Mole! What sound
judgments, what a knowledge of men and matters you possess! O unhappy and
forsaken Toad!’ With lamentations such as these he passed his days and nights
for several weeks, refusing his meals or intermediate light refreshments, though
the grim and ancient gaoler, knowing that Toad’s pockets were well lined,
frequently pointed out that many comforts, and indeed luxuries, could by
arrangement be sent in—at a price—from outside.
Now the gaoler had a daughter, a pleasant wench and good-hearted, who
assisted her father in the lighter duties of his post. She was particularly fond of
animals, and, besides her canary, whose cage hung on a nail in the massive wall
of the keep by day, to the great annoyance of prisoners who relished an after-
dinner nap, and was shrouded in an antimacassar on the parlour table at night,
she kept several piebald mice and a restless revolving squirrel. This kind-hearted
girl, pitying the misery of Toad, said to her father one day, ‘Father! I can’t bear
to see that poor beast so unhappy, and getting so thin! You let me have the
managing of him. You know how fond of animals I am. I’ll make him eat from
my hand, and sit up, and do all sorts of things.’
Her father replied that she could do what she liked with him. He was tired of
Toad, and his sulks and his airs and his meanness. So that day she went on her